


The Prisoners

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: Voices From The Zone [2]
Category: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Genre: Exploration, Family Issues, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Journalism, LGBTQ Themes, Military, Mistaken Identity, Murder, Post-Game(s), Prison, Science Fiction, Teenage Rebellion, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8469229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: The girl interviewed here is underage - she’s seventeen now, but was only fifteen when she ventured into the Zone. I was able to interview her with permission from her parents and the prison she resides in. The parents requested that her real name be left out.





	1. About Border Guards

So… I’m not sure I really understand why you’re asking me. You know… I never even made it in, just to the crossing… and there was this patrol right? But… no, I never even made it in. But now… maybe it’s a good thing, you know? The army was patrolling the woods, they caught me and I got arrested… I was in their outpost a few days before getting taken to prison. There were two other guys there, young guys, they looked just out of school. They asked me about why I was there. Well, I tried to go to the Zone because there’s nothing for me here. My father died in a car accident before I was born, just now my mother has died of a brain aneurysm. No brothers, no sisters either. There’s not really jobs in this part of the country. There could have been ways, I guess… they’ll pay you to move to Siberia, I think. But… nothing seemed right. It didn’t feel worth the time, I guess. So now I’m just locked up in here, and still with no-one and nothing.

These other two guys… they were much worse than me, I wonder how it is that I got the same sentence as them. I don’t really know what it was… something about trespassing on the government, and an ecological disaster area… but that was it for me. And they brought me back to Russia to do my time. But those two guys… they should have been put in the klink, they were gay. So how is it that we got the same sentence?

So now I’m in here, for ten years, and I’m not even fucked in the head like they were. How is that?

  
_No name given_


	2. About Blood

Tell me, writer… have you ever gone to those places? [ _He smiles and starts to lean forward, but is rebuked by the guard._ ] No… you haven’t, I can tell by looking, you have no idea… it’s all dust, blood, road and dirt and rocks… old shell casings. They’re all the same, really. Only difference… the Zone itself tries to kill you… that dust and dirt and rocks would kill if you if they could. Hell, the dust _does_ kill, it gets in your lungs, in your food… you get poisoned. So slowly.

But it’s cash, right in your hands. Kill this one guy for me, he says, and you’ll drive home in a new car. Deliver this artifact. Run guns for me, he says, you live like a king. And it’s cash, right in your hands. That cash has that one guy’s blood on it, it’s radioactive from that artifact. You don’t even care. You’re addicted to that cash, to killing that guy, to smuggling artifacts and weapons out onto the Big Land. I freely admit… contract killings. That was my thing. Of course… then the army arrests you, throws you in here… they know I wade through blood. I’d do it again. You get addicted. Addicted to blood. You’ll kill someone, you never even met him, know nothing about him except that his death pays in thousand-Ruble bills. And you don’t care, neither. Or I sure didn’t.

Not everyone was like me, of course… I was one of the dirtier ones, I wasn’t afraid of nothing in the Zone, I’m still not afraid of nothing… but some others, they were professionals, they could kill you if you got in their way but mostly mined for old government documents and things like that. Old research from the labs and such things. But me… I always took those missions, to kill. Because you see that cash, it’s written with death, and you can’t help but love it. Or maybe that’s just me.

  
_Arkady Vilkin, imprisoned member of the Mercenary faction_


	3. About Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The girl interviewed here is underage - she’s seventeen now, but was only fifteen when she ventured into the Zone. I was able to interview her with permission from her parents and the prison she resides in. The parents requested that her real name be left out.

Hey lady, have you ever been there? No? Well why do ask me about it, huh? Why don’t you just go there and take a look on your own?

[ _At this hostility, I changed the subject and asked what she did before she was arrested._ ]

Well… games, mostly. And school. At school though… I hated it. I wasn’t too smart in school, and everyone made fun of me. They called me a fag all the time and beat me up, like “You want to pretend to be a boy, then you’re a fucking fag.” Because I like boys, the way people say I’m supposed to… but on the inside, I know I’m male. My parents took me to a psychologist several times, and he just asked me: “But why do you want to be a boy? You like boys, don’t you? And you’re so pretty. If you were a boy, you’d be gay, and that’s no good for anyone.” The last time they took me to see him, when he made this argument, I just screamed at him. “FUCK YOU! I’M NOT A GIRL! I’M NOT A GIRL, I’M A MAN!” After that, my parents just gave up on me. My father stopped talking to me at all, but my mother kept trying to convince me: “But you’re my girl, my beautiful daughter. Why would ever want to be a man, when you’re so lovely the way you are?”

Fuck them. Fuck all of them.

My parents didn’t find this out until later, after I’d already gone, but I stole some money from them. In tiny increments, only a couple Gryvnas at a time, so I wouldn’t get caught. One day, when I had enough, I left for school but didn’t actually go. Instead I took the bus all the way across the city, and I went through the stores buying boys’ clothes. When I got home, my parents and my two older sisters were at work, so I closed the door for the apartment and just changed my clothes right there. Even boys’ underpants. I’d been looking online for a few months, and discovered that I’m not the only one like this, we just don’t ever talk about it here in Kiev. I learned I could stick a sock in my pants and wrap my chest with bandages to make myself look the way I wanted. It hurt my chest, sure, but then I filled up my backpack and got on the bus, and everyone knew I was male. They didn’t even question it, only why a school-age person would be on the bus at that time.

I learned about the Zone online, too.

Plenty of people had already gone there, for all kinds of reasons. Especially people who wanted to hide. I knew only a little about Chernobyl, really, just that it was some kind of nuclear wasteland. But I loved nuclear wastelands - Metro 2033, Fallout. Those series took place in their own unique post-nuclear future, and they were such fun games. Even one of the Call of Duty games featured some levels in Pripyat. So I figured, it’s no big deal. I put a blanket into my pack, some cans of beef tushonka, bottled water, two chocolate bars, and the remaining money I had. I got back on the bus after that, and rode it all the way to the north part of Kiev. I hitchhiked from there, and it took me two days just to get to Dityatky, and I was really tired. Dityaky was just this little place, and I felt weird there, because I’ve lived in Kiev since I was born. Up the highway from it was a little toll booth, which I found out from a babushka who saw me wandering around and asked if I wanted a meal. All her children had moved away, she said, so she enjoyed the dinner company from a young person.

“Where are you headed to, sonny?”

“Up north.”

“Oh, that could be hard for you, sonny. There’s too many soldiers on the highway up there, they won’t let you go there.”

“But I really need to go there.”

“Well… I think I heard a couple of the boys talking about it, too. Why do so many young people talk about it? It’s only the young people, really.”

“Well, we just do, I guess. Do you know where I can talk to them about it?”

She told me how to find them, and when I was done eating I went to the house that one of them lived in. He was a few years older than me, and after I told him I wanted to enter the Zone he just wouldn’t shut up about it. He and his cousin wanted to go there, they’d heard about some magic stones to make them rich or something, and told me right away that I could journey with them because larger groups are safer. But not just him and his cousin, but also his girlfriend and a couple friends he’d had in school. He had only one problem with me.

“Bro, you look like you’re twelve. You sure?”

“I’m fifteen. I’m just… you know, short.”

I knew he didn’t believe me, but eventually he agreed and said we’d be going there at the end of the week, and that I could stay until then. I got scared; I knew my parents had already found out that I was gone, they’d be looking for me, and I argued with him until he was convinced to leave the next morning. It was really hard for me to sleep, because I was scared that someone would show up to find me, but nobody came.

The other four people showed up before the sun was rising, and they packed me with all the food because I was the smallest one. And then we did it - we snuck into the Zone through the forest.

The Zone wasn’t really what any of us thought it could be like, especially me. Nuclear wastelands for me were a game setting, where you roam around killing enemies and hitting objectives. But it’s actually very gray, very ugly, not like a game at all. Everything around you is either dead or wants to kill you there, with thugs trying to mug you unless you make it to a bigger stalker community. And then, like, they want a cut of your stuff, for the people who don’t have as much stuff as you.

After a few weeks, my chest really hurt, all the time, but I never took off the bandage. I was scared that the Kevlar couldn’t even hide me, even though Misha’s girlfriend was totally hidden by a bulletproof vest and a gas mask as long as she didn’t talk.

I don’t really… want to talk to much about what happened there. Just… you know, shit happened. Now I’m here, obviously. The army came and raided our camp right before winter… they arrested me and brought me here. It’s worse here than the Zone. Because for everything, I was free there. I was myself. Now I’m back to being called a girl when I’m not one. When they put me in here, some cop talked to me in a closed room.

“You’re so young and pretty, why would you break all these laws, why would you go there? And shoot other people?”

But I just hate everything so much out here, out in the world. Because the Zone is the only place where I could be who I am. And I just lied right to his face, and I tell this to everyone who asks, especially my family: “Who cares? It’s just a game, right?”

  
_“Kiril,” imprisoned youth stalker_


End file.
